It's amazing that magazine layout designers did as well as they did considering they didn't have a measurable fraction of the data we have now on users' reading habits. With the (ever evolving) data we now have from eye tracking tests in usability labs, modern designers have an amazing advantage when it comes to creating intuitive web pages and applications.

The downside, though, is so much of the web has become homogenous. It feels like every start up has an out-of-the-box website build with bootstrap, complete with a full-width parallax header image and liberal use of Helvetica Neue.